So, Teddabear - when a Feral has to shift out to dispel, it's a 'shifting penalty', but when a rogue uses Feint, he can keep it up 100%? Both is a dps loss, but the rogue looses far more dps when keeping up Feint 100% than a Feral does when selfhealing and dispelling.

I agree that a rogue has a far more convenient (= easy to use) set of utilities, but the Feral utility set is far more helpful to others in the raid. Rogues basically bring smoke bomb - that's it.

If you guys wanna include survivability CD's, a Feral has both Barskin, Survival Instincts and Might of Ursoc - none of these cost energy, they are not even on GCD. And let's not forget Glyph of Cat Form, which buffs all healing on the Feral by 20%. On top of all this, the Feral can use PS procs on Healing Touch and the Feral has a pretty good chance at using Symbiosis to get a survival CD from priests or paladins.

Adornus, if what you say is valid, then rogue utility needs a massive nerf. But I don't think it's valid. Rogue utility is easy to use and has short CD's and rogue dps is high, so they are preferred to Ferals - but jumping from that to 'Feral utility sucks', while at the same time neglecting 75% of the utility abilities available to Ferals is just illogical.

Apples and Oranges. So many people can dispel that it would be very rare these days that a Feral dispel is needed. Since other specs don't have to shift to dispel it just doesn't make much sense to have them do it. Feint is a 80% personal damage reduction with no cooldown and Cloak is a 100% damage reduction on a 1 minute cooldown. Ferals only 1 minute cooldown is barkskin which pales in comparison. Also being able to remove undispelable debuffs is incredibly powerful in heroics. Symbiosis would be nice if it wasn't so badly designed. The class has to be in your party AND not targeted by another Symbiosis. If you have a Druid healer he will be getting the defensive cooldown, not the Feral. Glyph of catform has the same limitation as Tranquility, you can't heal dead people.

Feint doesn't reduce damage taken by 80% - and it has an energy cost. Don't make it better than it is.

Your Symbiosis target doesn't need to be in your party - in the raid is fine.

A lot of specs can dispel, but since it's on an 8 sec CD, having an extra dispeller can be quite good. Speaking of Glyph of Cat Form, I think it's interesting (in this context, rather grotesque) that you dismiss the extra 20% healing received as trivial. 20% extra healing is not trivial, in any content. You also dismiss healing from Healing Touch - which is also non-trivial. You don't even mention the healing from Leader of the Pack. Your argument is that 'Damage mitigated is always better than healing received' - but that's only correct if you would get 1-shot if the damage is not mitigated. However, you don't get 1-shot, so there is time to heal up - and Feral is really good at that.

But you have to ACTIVELY use your healing abilities - and when I read your posts, you seem like you don't really like to do that.

Resto, balance, and feral druids get their symbiosis defensive cooldowns from different classes (hunter, mage, and monk for resto; rogue, death knight, and warlock for balance; priest and paladin for feral).

I'm aware its AoE but I did forget everything is multipicative not additive.

Party or raid, it still means if you have a Druid healer you aren't getting Divine shield in 10 man since the Resto will want Cleanse.
Which Bosses do you dispel anybody other than yourself?

20% is nice but you still can't heal a dead person. Yes damage mitigated is always better than healing received. I suppose if everybody had 5% or 10% damage reductions then it might be significant but compared to a 65% spamable damage reduction it is trivial. If Blizzard hadn't tuned damage so high because they let absorbs get out of control then it might be a different story but we have to live with Blizzard's mistakes.

I use my heals every chance I get. To the point of gimping my damage on things like Rampage and Fist Smash so I can get as many PS procs as possible. It still doesn't compare to 65% less damage.

Lets put some context into this. Heroic Megaera you are going to take about 12 million from Rampage even with Raid CDs. Rogue uses feint so he needs 4 million in healing. Feral gets 20% extra healing assuming he doesn't die so he needs 10 million in healing. That's over 100 healing Healing Touches in 100 seconds which means you need to generate 5 combo points every second. Good luck with that. We could factor in the other damage reductions but since Cloak of Shadows > all Feral CDs added together I will assume those are being saved for the rest of the encounter.

Personal survivability generally only matters if there's a mechanic that will kill the individual and healers can't do much about it, at least in the general population. I'm more focused on things like Static Shock on heroic Lei Shen, where (surprise!) classes that can solo the mechanic tend to have a much higher representation. I honestly think that's why Blizz let Feral symbiosis with priests give Dispersion and paladins give Divine Shield, as it's gives Ferals that added toolkit to be able to solo some mechanics on a longer cooldown. However, the obvious downside is that the Feral would need the specific class in the raid, and there would have to be enough of said classes to allow all the Ferals to use the ability... semi-reasonable on 25man, much harder on 10man.

If we start to focus on encounters where there's more constant raid damage that's not immediately threatening, there's more of a balance. Damage reduction only goes so far, since it will never completely stop the damage w/o massive absorbs. Even with massive absorbs, the longer the raid-wide AoE persists or the more often it occurs, the more important actual healing becomes as a personal responsibility and for raid utility. A good example would be the end of the Ra-den encounter, where there's a constant AoE going out until the encounter ends. Raid-wide damage reduction is good, but actual healing CDs are good, too. I always go HotW spec as Feral for the encounter, since I can actually offer the utility of HotW + Tranquility near the end of the encounter (always ends up doing over 10million healing with Tranquility, and the effect is so clearly evident if you watch the entire raid's HP pretty much top off). Even when I'm not using Tranquility, my HP is usually the highest at any given time because I can consistently self-heal myself.

Now, I believe the crux of the debate centers on how the raids are being designed. As the blue post states concerning SoO, they liked the model of more personal responsibility in ToT and applied it to SoO. The question becomes whether the nature of the personal responsibility can be trivialized by bringing certain classes in the majority of cases. I'll admit ToT favored rogues and other non-druid classes to the extent that many of the "personal responsibility" mechanics could be ignored or negated by their class abilities, but certainly not all. While a symbiosis could help Ferals in this regard in ToT, there were some occasions where utility desired in a fight could be brought by a Feral. While the immediate rebuttal would be that if a Feral could bring it, any other spec of druid could bring it... and that's true. Maybe we've come to the point where abilities beneficial to the raid outside of raid buffs/debuffs need to be segregated by spec, although I'm of the mind that there always shouldn't be an upside to bringing one class/spec over another (that's just bad design).

Apples and Oranges. So many people can dispel that it would be very rare these days that a Feral dispel is needed. Since other specs don't have to shift to dispel it just doesn't make much sense to have them do it. Feint is a 80% personal damage reduction with no cooldown and Cloak is a 100% damage reduction on a 1 minute cooldown. Ferals only 1 minute cooldown is barkskin which pales in comparison. Also being able to remove undispelable debuffs is incredibly powerful in heroics. Symbiosis would be nice if it wasn't so badly designed. The class has to be in your party AND not targeted by another Symbiosis. If you have a Druid healer he will be getting the defensive cooldown, not the Feral. Glyph of catform has the same limitation as Tranquility, you can't heal dead people.

Cloak is very useful as a personal CD, yes. It's not in any way a raid utility though. Any more than a Mage's Ice Block is.

Cloak is very useful as a personal CD, yes. It's not in any way a raid utility though. Any more than a Mage's Ice Block is.

It's certainly utility, I don't think it matters if you call it raid utility.
Can you immune Jinrok's ionization?
Can you remove your diseases on Horridon door 3?
Can you immune frost bite on Council?
Can you remove the undispellable fire debuff on IQ?
Can you solo static shocks?
Those are important questions a good raid leader will consider when selecting DPS.
Plus it is essentially a personal battle res with full rebuffs every 60 seconds when compared to what other classes can do. Yes Iceblock is good too but its a 5 minute cooldown.

Sorry but I seriously don't understand, what your're trying to say here?

in 2 words if your mind can't handle it
feral cat suck in classic and tbc, ppl who plays from that days still consider it
and again doc>hotw only on sim

as for me I don't consider 10m as a real raiding, so I not even look at those guilds, more ppl more fun more epic feeling plus more chance on loot, it only going to 10m because of Hardware limitation, dead servers or casual play where feral skills doesn't matter

in 2 words if your mind can't handle itferal cat suck in classic and tbc, ppl who plays from that days still consider it
and again doc>hotw only on sim

as for me I don't consider 10m as a real raiding, so I not even look at those guilds, more ppl more fun more epic feeling plus more chance on loot, it only going to 10m because of Hardware limitation, dead servers or casual play where feral skills doesn't matter

What my mind couldn't handle, was the amount of typos, the miss-spelling and weird composition of your post. What do you even mean in the part I just highlighted? "Ppl who play from that days still consider it" Consider what?

Regardless of your own personal opinion about 10 vs. 25 man raiding, that's not the topic here so go rant about that somewhere else maybe. Although I can't help laughing at your statement, that Feral skills doesn't matter in 10 man - how does that even make sense? Unless you consider 10 man guilds who're clearing 13/13 Heroic in one night to be casual?

Even if you were only to look at 25 man raiding, Ferals are still one of the lowest represented specs, what's your explanation to that then?

in 2 words if your mind can't handle it
feral cat suck in classic and tbc, ppl who plays from that days still consider it
and again doc>hotw only on sim

as for me I don't consider 10m as a real raiding, so I not even look at those guilds, more ppl more fun more epic feeling plus more chance on loot, it only going to 10m because of Hardware limitation, dead servers or casual play where feral skills doesn't matter

Now it's me that seriously don't understand what you're trying to say?
In 2 words? Which two words? "feral cat suck in ...." I'm losing track of the amount of words?
"if you mind can't handle it" Handle what? The 2 words that never comes? And wouldn't you want it to be can in this case?
You don't consider 10m as raiding because you don't like it and never have tried it, and believe feral skill matters less there than in 25 man where you tend to need close to the same damage and more running from each individual player? (not saying 10 man is harder, before people start bashing on that)
DoC is a dpsincrease outside of sims if you play it well enough, but yeah it's negligible. That one i understood. I just disagree

That's all good, if you have a Paladin in your roster. My own guild raided majority of this Tier without a single Paladin in the roster and if you have a Resto Druid, you can be sure that said Druid would want Symb on the Paladin on Horridon for dispelling. Also, isn't the Symbiosis version of Bubble too long for you to use it twice on Jin'rokh?

The reason that i never liked the druid class is the shapeshiftning.. to me, its just looks terrible.. the bear the cat and especially the owl just look retarded.. (i know there is celestial form now for moonkin)

My﻿ girlfriend said she does't like metal.
Now she is Single
No Just kidding
....
She is Dead

What my mind couldn't handle, was the amount of typos, the miss-spelling and weird composition of your post. What do you even mean in the part I just highlighted? "Ppl who play from that days still consider it" Consider what?

u are horrible
3rd time: cats were worst of all talent specialization before 3rd warcraft expansion: wrath of lich king , noone was playing them and lots of people still think that

Originally Posted by Terridon

Now it's me that seriously don't understand what you're trying to say?
In 2 words? Which two words? "feral cat suck in ...." I'm losing track of the amount of words?
"if you mind can't handle it" Handle what? The 2 words that never comes? And wouldn't you want it to be can in this case?
You don't consider 10m as raiding because you don't like it and never have tried it, and believe feral skill matters less there than in 25 man where you tend to need close to the same damage and more running from each individual player? (not saying 10 man is harder, before people start bashing on that)
DoC is a dpsincrease outside of sims if you play it well enough, but yeah it's negligible. That one i understood. I just disagree

feral cats specialization sucked in past expansion before wrath
first I told it's my opinion,it's not about 10vs25 which is harder, but about how 25 better for raiding atmosphere and rewards.
I have done 10m and I know how it easy to handle and also rewarding less , and for those who wanted to play feral seriously, better choice would be to find 25man guild, coz of loots and more challenges, easier to catch up, plus there more raiding spots available.
Not long ago I was browsing wowprogress site looking for better place, and 9 out 10 guilds after top 10 progressed I've checked have feral or feral/bear in their guild rosters

u are horrible
3rd time: cats were worst of all talent specialization before 3rd warcraft expansion: wrath of lich king , noone was playing them and lots of people still think that

feral cats specialization sucked in past expansion before wrath
first I told it's my opinion,it's not about 10vs25 which is harder, but about how 25 better for raiding atmosphere and rewards.
I have done 10m and I know how it easy to handle and also rewarding less , and for those who wanted to play feral seriously, better choice would be to find 25man guild, coz of loots and more challenges, easier to catch up, plus there more raiding spots available.
Not long ago I was browsing wowprogress site looking for better place, and 9 out 10 guilds after top 10 progressed I've checked have feral or feral/bear in their guild rosters

ROFL I'm the horrible one here? Your posts makes no sense in relation to this topic, honestly I'm still not sure what you're trying to say. If the only reason why Feral's aren't being brought to raids, is cause "people think they're still shit" as you say, more or less everyone else in this thread must be wrong.

I'm not sure if it's your lack of English skill that makes you sound rather stupid or if it's because you actually think that a) your posts makes sense or b) you really are that clueless.

Btw, what the fuck does "raiding atmosphere and rewards" got to do with Ferals being benched? What the fuck does your own guild search got to do with Ferals being benched?

You say that 9/10 guilds after the top 10 have either a Feral or a Guardian, how does Guardian numbers even relate to Feral representation? Also, there's a big difference between having a Feral in your roster and said Feral being in on kills like Heroic Lei Shen (the boss in focus in this thread). If you go back and read the other posts, you'll see the numbers. Feral are dead last on 10 man and third to last on 25 man, so all your crap about better rewards, more challenge etc. is basically a pile of BS in this context.

That's all good, if you have a Paladin in your roster. My own guild raided majority of this Tier without a single Paladin in the roster and if you have a Resto Druid, you can be sure that said Druid would want Symb on the Paladin on Horridon for dispelling. Also, isn't the Symbiosis version of Bubble too long for you to use it twice on Jin'rokh?

You can also get Deterrence from a Hunter or Dispersion from a Priest, which are almost as good.

Paladins are certainly nice to have but they are also in high demand and can be hard to hold onto. It always seems Blizzard never really puts much thought into Feral, they should have realized the current design of Symbiosis would be a major issue in 10 mans. After the T16 4-pc bonus fiasco though I wonder if they put any thought into Feral at all. In any event Ferals cannot count on getting any defensive CD in 10 mans while in 25s it shouldn't be an issue. Franky I prefer 25s but my guild is 11/13H and the highest 25 man on my server is 3/13H. You will find some Ferals in the top 100 25 man guilds but they are extremely rare in the top 10 mans.